[The following is an edited version of Jigme Rinpoche’s English language summary of the remarks His Eminence made to everyone at the Rinchen Terdzo after the end of the February 1st day of empowerments. His Eminence gave a twenty-minute talk in Tibetan, and then Jigme Rinpoche gave a five-minute summary to the westerners before we all closed the practice for the day.

His Eminence began by saying that we have now been here for two months. He said at this time there were a few important points he wanted to emphasize to us. I started recording fifteen seconds into the summary, at the beginning of three main points His Eminence was to stress. These three key points are devotion, compassion and samaya.

Samaya is a Sanskrit word referring to the vows taken in the vajrayana. When receiving an empowerment one first retakes the refuge and bodhisattva vows; one reaffirms one’s commitment to the Buddha, the teachings and the sangha or community, and then one retakes the vows to attain enlightenment in order of benefit all beings. Additionally, one takes the vajrayana vows. The main samayas are the samayas of body, speech and mind explained below. Samaya is making a commitment to the wisdom and compassion embodied by the teacher and the lineage and shown to be present in ourselves. In a sense we vow to remain within our inherent wisdom, within the realization of buddha nature. The path is to stay within that wisdom. When can do that continuously, that is the end of the path.]

Jigme Rinpoche, summarizing His Eminence Namkha Drimed Rinpoche:

[…First, I would like to make] the point that in this degenerate era when our mindstream is extremely suspicious, extremely restless, complicated and complex, we do not have enough possibility, or enough wisdom, to actually develop devotion. Without devotion, the crucial link to accomplishing the deities is missing. Therefore it is highly important to understand that we must cause devotion to arise within us again and again.

Second is the development bodhicitta or compassion to all sentient beings. Without compassion, the way or the door to benefiting others is missing. These two points of devotion and compassion are very important. They are crucial factors for every practitioner to understand. At the same time, we really have to know that in this era we have a lot of negative emotions and negative circumstances. When these counter-productive circumstances are strong, we should be putting even more effort and energy into the two important factors of devotion and compassion.

The Rinchen Terdzo is of course very precious. But what makes the Rinchen Terdzo even more precious is the fact that there is a very unique lineage, a living lineage of transmission that I hold. This makes it more important. It gives life, actual life to the empowerment. It doesn’t matter whether we are counting the number of empowerments we’ve received or not. What is important here is the living lineage through which the whole transmission is taking place. That is what makes the whole thing different and precious.

The heart of empowerment is samaya, as I have told you before. Therefore, everyone should try to observe the samayas properly. Out of all the different kinds of samayas the main ones are the three samayas of body, speech and mind. These three samayas are the binding cord of the teachings. Every manifestation— physical, verbal, mental—is left free from manipulation, free from mental interpretations, and thus one is trained to see in pure vision.The forms one sees are seen as a deity. What one hears is heard as mantra. What one perceives mentally is nothing other than the pure thought, pure energy arising either in the form of devotion or in the form of compassion. These three main factors of samaya are crucial.

At the same time, the negative emotions can be at work every now and then, particularly in our daily life. In our life we often experience negative emotions that are physical, verbal or mental. To overcome that, while receiving these empowerments when the mind is busy thinking all sorts of negative thoughts and emotions that then break the samayas, I have strongly recommended reciting 100,000 Vajrasattva mantras and 100,000 Guru Rinpoche mantras. This is mainly to help overcome these kinds of obstacles, and to prevent impairments of samaya from arising. Then the living transmission of the lineage will uninterruptedly flow into your own being becomes uninterrupted. It will flow directly into your own being. Through that we gain wisdom, blessings and accomplishment. And so, in the end, it’s my wish to tell all of you not to engage in distractions or in the thoughts that are not so important, not so wholesome, but rather to develop awareness again and again, whenever you can.

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